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Aberystwyth University the Poet As a Healer Aberystwyth University The Poet as a Healer Huws, Bleddyn Published in: Transactions of the Physicians of Myddfai Society / Trafodion Cymdeithas Meddygon Myddfai Publication date: 2018 Citation for published version (APA): Huws, B. (2018). The Poet as a Healer. Transactions of the Physicians of Myddfai Society / Trafodion Cymdeithas Meddygon Myddfai, 2011-2017, 143-149. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 The Poet as a Healer Bleddyn Owen Huws All the quotations in verse apart from one in this paper are inflamed circles that appeared under the children’s armpits in the cywydd meter. For those who are not familiar with that caused them to shout in agony. The black buboes are Welsh poetry, just a brief word of explanation. The cywydd described as dimeiau, gemau gwymon , ‘halfpenny coins, and is one of the twenty four strict meters of cerdd dafod , the seaweed floats’. 5 The swollen dark lumps that appeared on the traditional Welsh verse-craft. It consists of seven syllable skin are ingeniously depicted by this metaphor of seaweed lines arranged in rhyming couplets, and every line contains floats or air filled bladders. one of the four main types of cynghanedd . I should add that Face to face with the vicious attack of pestilence, people the cywydd is still a popular medium with contemporary often could no nothing but pray for protection. But a Welsh poets, and used by many of them with great skill and recurring theme in some of these elegies is that people’s proficiency. attempts to pray for protection had failed. The fifteenth It was the late Glyn Penrhyn Jones (1921-1973), one of century poet Dafydd Llwyd of Mathafarn near Machynlleth Wales’s most notable medical historians, and himself a composed an elegy to a girl he loved who died from the distinguished physician, who first realised the importance plague. Although many people had gone to church to pray of the poetry of the Cywyddwyr – the professional Welsh on her behalf until their knees were bruised, and also gave poets of the late medieval period – as a source of information many offerings, their prayers were not answered. What’s about the outbreaks of bubonic plague, as well as other striking about this poem is the combination of lamentation diseases such as smallpox. 1 Firstly in his book Newyn a Haint and what Glyn Penrhyn Jones called a ‘remarkable clinical yng Nghymru (Famine and Disease in Wales) published in objectivity’. The signs of plague were visible on the girl’s 1963, and secondly in his paper published in 1975 entitled body: ‘The Welsh Poet as a Medical Historian’, Glyn Penrhyn Jones gathers information about visitations of the plague in Ysgrifen chwarren a’i chwys Wales by drawing on elegies, cywyddau marwnad .2 Some of Yn lliwio dan ei llewys, these elegies provide very graphic evidence of the effects of A hefyd i gyd ei gwar, pestilence, and many of the most poignant examples come Dimeiau fal nod mwyar. from a small group of elegies composed by grieving poets Penodau ôl pin ydyw, whose children died from the plague. 3 There were several Powdr ermyn ar groen gwyn gwyw. 6 outbreaks of the bubonic plague during the century following the great pandemic of 1349. ‘The mark [on] the gland and its sweat stains under The Anglesey poet, Gwilym ap Sefnyn, lamented the death her sleeve, and the nape of her neck all covered with of his ten children who probably died during the 1420s. coin shaped spots like berries, the marks [or points] Gwilym, who was by then an old man, was tormented by of pinholes, [and] powdered ermine on pale [or grief and could only wish the Lord take him from this world withered] white skin.’ so that he could be with his children. 4 Another poet, Llywelyn Fychan, lost five of his children to the plague, and in a poem Ermine is a term used in heraldry for black spots on a white mourning their death he offers a detailed description of the background, and this image corresponds with another line 143 Transactions of the Physicians of Myddfai Society ~ Trafodion Cymdeithas Meddygon Myddfai, 2011-2017 in the poem that describes the appearance of the dark been established in London by the beginning of the blotches on the girl’s fair skin as, Bupr ac inc ar bapur gwyn , fifteenth century, practitioners continued to call for greater ‘Pepper and ink on white paper’. 7 regulation in order to curb the charlatans who were One cannot but imagine the amount of fear caused by considered a threat to public health. Understandably, the the outbreak of the plague, which led people to flee their licensed physicians were keen to uphold the highest homes and communities. Such fear is vividly conveyed by standards of their profession, and in a petition to the poet Guto’r Glyn in his elegy to Dafydd Llwyd ap parliament in 1421 they warned against what they called Gruffudd of Abertanad in the Tanat Valley, Powys, who ‘many unconnyge and unapproved in the forsayd Science probably died during the 1464-5 outbreak when he was [that] practiseth… in Fisyk… [and] use hit to grete harm possibly in his late twenties. Guto refers to the warnings and slaughter of many men.’ 9 given by God before two disasters mentioned in the Old The impression we have is that sick people were Testament, the first given to Noah before the deluge, and vulnerable and seen as easy game for rogue doctors. Some the second to Lot and his wife before the destruction of quacks were out there just to fleece patients and their Sodom and Gomorrah. But the third warning came to families. There was general suspicion of the so called Dafydd Llwyd in the form of a bubo, the swelling of a ‘doctors of physic’ as there was among them some dubious lymph node, three days before his death – a sure symptom characters who made their living by offering false hopes of the plague. The suddenness of the outbreak caused based on false treatments. Take for example a certain Roger panic: Clerk who faced trial by the mayor and aldermen of London in 1382 for claiming to be a physician. 10 He had Trydydd i Ddafydd a ddoeth received payment in advance from a man whose wife Tridiau cyn marw gfir tradoeth: suffered from a fever, and had written a charm in Latin on Cornwyd ar y gfir llwydwyn, a piece of parchment and wrapped it in golden cloth, and Carnedd o ddialedd ynn… hung it around the sick woman’s throat. When her Udfa dduw Llun, ‘Dafydd Llwyd!’, condition worsened, her husband became suspicious, and A roes gwªr a wasgarwyd; accused Roger Clerk of being a quack. The charm, of Udo dduw Mawrth nid oedd mwy course, was meant to cure the patient, but when the said Hyd Feifod, udo fwyfwy; piece of parchment was produced in court, it became very Udo dduw Iau nad oedd iach, clear that poor old Roger had no command of Latin at all Wedi’i farw udfa oerach. 8 as he was illiterate. All he had done was scribble across the piece of parchment. ‘A third warning came to Dafydd / three days before A commonplace in late medieval sermons and literature the death of a very wise man: / a bubo on the fair is that doctors were not to be trusted because of their and holy man, / a cairn of retribution for us… Men insatiable greed for money. In Chaucer’s Prologue to The who were scattered / gave a howl on Monday, Canterbury Tales , the fictional ‘Doctor of Physic’ and his ‘Dafydd Llwyd!’; / there was no greater howling on love of gold serves to represent the general prejudice against Tuesday / as far as Meifod, greater and greater physicians. 11 And as we can see in the following quotation howling; / howling on Thursday because he was from a poem by Siôn Tudur from the Vale of Clwyd, the unwell, / a colder howl after his death.’ portrayal of the unscrupulous doctor also circulated in sixteenth-century Wales: In the cities and towns of England in the late Middle Ages, in London and York, for example, medical care was Dyma flwyddyn i’r pysygwr provided by physicians who had studied medicine at the I ysbeilio pob gwannwr, universities of Europe, in Bologna, Montpellier and Paris, Ac i addo’n iach ei wneuthud but medical care by a trained professional was only O saith anaele glefyd, available to those who could afford it. In the rural A chael dwybunt i ddechrau communities of Wales most people had to depend on Am werth grot o gyffuriau, untrained practitioners, the care offered by monks in the A rhoi iddo arian lawer, monasteries, and whatever care was provided by family A’r claf yn waeth o’r hanner; members.
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